Should we tip all service workers, not just some?
It is a valid question.
Friday night, 麻豆社国产Wendy’s has a lineup of cars at the take-out window.
Inside, there is a row of folks waiting for their food.
Asked how she is, the polite employee taking an order says, ‘Busy, really busy.”
The staff look a lot like they have done a marathon run.
Yet they smile at customers, and orders arrive within a few minutes.
There is no tip option on the point-of-sale (POS) terminal.
There never is for fast food.
Or for grocery clerks.
At a 麻豆社国产grocery store the next day, customers — a mix of locals and visitors — are queued up and staff do their best to get customers through efficiently.
We know anecdotally from service workers in town, from studies and from headlines globally that they were faced with abusive and rude behaviour during the pandemic.
They were on the front lines of trying to enforce COVID-19 restrictions they had no control over.
Rude customers are one of the factors that led to the so-called — many quitting their jobs during the pandemic.
Undoubtedly, as events are picking back up in the Sea to Sky, fast-food workers, grocery store clerks and others in service industries will be busier than ever.
With several tournaments this past weekend, it is likely they were busier than they have been in a while.
Whether there should be tipping anywhere or not is a long-held, unresolved debate.
The social norm of today’s tips — the acronym means To Insure Prompt Service — began in 18th-century English pubs, according to writings by
The custom was reportedly
Some have challenged the practice since.
(To be clear, all those who currently receive tips deserve them. This isn’t about taking tips away from anyone but looking at who is left out. And we know there are rules on the company side that prevent tipping at some places; we are talking about the bigger cultural question here. )
New immigrants to Canada blog, aims to top up comparatively lower wages, but if that were the case, we would tip grocery workers and the like, and we don’t.
Some point out that workers should just be paid enough to live comfortably in their community without tips.
Some local service employers have raised wages, to be fair.
What about adding a gratuity to the bill of all service workers?
There have been experiments and studies about alternatives to the current system, but none have come to a decision we can all agree on.
Meanwhile, tipping has moved into more and more establishments, like bakeries and coffee shops.
Likely some folks will argue that where we tip is about creating the food, and at fast-food restaurants, that isn’t done; it is more assembly than cooking.
But couldn’t the same be true of some coffee shops, smoothie shops and salad bar-type spots with a tipping option?
We tip taxi drivers and some hotel workers, too, and they aren’t making things.
The point being our philosophy behind tipping is contradictory.
So, what is the solution?
As a culture, we could eliminate tipping and compensate workers differently — but that is not realistic in the short term.
It would be much easier to add a tip option for those who are left out.
And there’s some evidence that as much as many of us grumble about it, we value tipping.
Lynn says evidence from studies shows that tipping enhances restaurant customers' overall satisfaction.
“Presumably, this is because it increases both perceived and actual service quality and allows customers to determine the cost of that service,” he said in .
But it seems locals don’t want to consider tipping those, like fast-food workers.
In our online poll, 71% of those who voted said they didn’t want to see tipping for all service workers.
Fair enough.
But in a town like Squamish, where many places are short-staffed, tourists outnumber locals in the summer months, and the pandemic has battered service workers, the least we can do is think about why we tip and whom.
And to 麻豆社国产service workers who don’t get tips and have to deal with so much with a smile — thank you!
